Opinion

Celebration regulation not unethical

The National Collegiate Athletic Association, based in Indianapolis, is the main organization that governs and sets rules for college sports in the United States and Canada. This has put it smack in the middle of a number of controversies lately - if the issue of whether there should be a college-football playoff system were a matter of ethics, I'd have to get a bigger mailbox - but I hadn't previously had occasion to consider an issue brought to my attention by R.C., a reader from Alabama.

My reader is referring to NCAA Football Rule 9-2, which specifies that a 15-yard penalty be assessed for any "delayed, excessive, prolonged or choreographed act by which a player (or players) attempts to focus attention on himself (or themselves)." R.C. contends that certain human responses "are innate and therefore uncontrollable." How then, he says, "can the NCAA expect the very primal instinct to celebrate the accomplishment of a goal, especially one that the individual has likely trained for years to be able to accomplish, to somehow be switched off?" He further wants to know if it is ethical for the NCAA to profit from the interest in collegiate athletics and then to punish the players for "acting on impulses that are beyond their control?" After all, R.C. adds, he sees these same impulses played out among the thousands of fans in attendance and untold numbers more watching in homes around the country when they simultaneously throw their hands into the air and scream.

Contending that the "excessive celebration" rule has affected the final outcome of several contests and led to widely publicized outcries from both fans and athletes, R.C. says: "If the fans, coaches and players have a consensus view of this rule that differs from that of the sanctioning body, is it incumbent upon that body to change the rule?" R.C.'s question takes on particular relevance given the NCAA's April decision to change its rules so that, starting in 2011, the penalty for taunting an opposing team on the way to scoring a touchdown will include the loss of that touchdown - obviously a potential game-changer.

The current taunting rule requires only a 15-yard penalty assessed on the extra-point attempt or subsequent kickoff.

I'm guessing that R.C.'s team may have come out on the wrong side of an "excessive celebration" penalty recently, and I understand his frustration. However, I don't think there's anything unethical about the rule itself.

Jeffrey L. Seglin is an author and associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics.